Creepy Crawleys!

Like many people I know, I enjoy being out in the garden in the early morning. The camera came with me today (I don't always take it...it kind of seems to change the way I look at the world) and what a good thing. On the underside of leaves on both a grevillea and a banksia,I found spectacular ants' nests.

**WARNING** If you don't like creepy crawleys, look away now!**

My blood still goes cold even uploading these photos...they were big ants, about 8mm, long. They had built the nests from what looked like sawdust or something similar, and the nests were quite solid. I tried to poke into them with a stick ( eeerrggghhh) , but the stick didn't make any impression.


The curled-up leaf below, closest to the camera, is about 22cm long, and the nest on the underside is about 12cm long.

The photo below shows the underside of the same leaf....the nest was about 5cm wide, and about 4 cm high. There was a little tunnel down one side of it, so the ants could come and go.

OOOOOooo..my skin is still crawling.!!!